To be sure, the clergymen were under some sort of professional necessity of treating it seriously, and they used to prepare profound papers, arranged in heads and subheads, with titles and subtitles, and after all the usual ostentatious preliminary examination of the grounds and the authorities, and with the appearance of academic fairness, in discussions that were formal, exact, redolent of the oil, bearing the hallmark of the schools, they would show that Jesus meant there were only certain exigencies in which, and certain persons to whom, this rule was to be applied. It was all very learned and impressive, but one was apt to develop a disturbing doubt as to whether one was of those to whom it was to be applied. It was certainly not to be applied to criminals, or perhaps even to politicians. It was not to be applied to poor people, or to the working people, unless they were in Sunday-school as conscious inferiors, in devout and penitent attitudes. And as these people were so seldom in church or Sunday-school, and as those who were there apparently needed no such consideration, these discourses left one rather uncertain as to what to do with the Golden Rule. All men of course believe in the Golden Rule, or say they do, but they believe in it only “up to a certain point,” and with each individual this point differs; the moment in which to abandon the Rule and take to “the shotgun and the club” comes to some soon, to others late, and to some oftener than others; but to most, if not to all of us, it inevitably arrives. That is why, no doubt, the world is no farther along in the solution of the many distressing problems it has on its mind. According to the standards of conduct and of “honor” inherited from the feudal ages, while personal violence may be conceded to be illegal, one is, nevertheless, still generally taught that it is wrong and unmanly not to resent an insult or an injury, by violence, if necessary,--fighting and killing, by individuals, states and nations, are thought to be not only honorable and worthy, but, in many cases, indispensable. Society has an obsession similar to that strange superstition of the feud, which affects the Kentucky mountaineers. Generally we are less afraid to fight than we are not to fight. Our system is based on force, our faith is placed in force, so that nearly all of the proposals of reform, for the correction of abuses, involve the use of violence in some form. We have erected a huge idol in the figure of the beadle, who, assisted by the constable, is to make society over, to make men “good.” Jones came upon the scene in America at a time when there was undoubtedly a new and really splendid impetus toward a better and higher conception of life and conduct, both in public and private. Yet even then no other thought seemed to possess the public mind than that someone should be put in prison and made to suffer.